


Going Stag

by AryaNoName (merrymegtargaryen)



Series: Westeros Academy [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, westeros academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/pseuds/AryaNoName
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting Gendry and Arya together is harder than it looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Stag

**Author's Note:**

> Third installment of Westeros Academy (although you don't have to read any of the others for this to make sense), prompted by emmanatrix.

The pounding on the door was so sudden and so loud that Jeyne screamed.

“It’s just Arya,” said Sansa irritably. She knew Arya’s knock; she heard it whenever she took too long in the bathroom at home. Sansa opened the door and Arya came barreling in. 

“Gendry’s being an idiot!” the younger Stark bellowed by way of greeting.

Sansa and Jeyne exchanged knowing looks. No one wanted Gendry and Arya to get together more than Sansa and Jeyne; it could even be said that they wanted Gendry and Arya to get together more than Gendry and Arya did. 

“Tell us all about it,” Jeyne cooed encouragingly.

Arya kicked Sansa’s bed. “I was just messing around. I asked if he had a hot date for the dance. And then he said he was going stag.” She did not look amused. “So I said we could go together and he goes ‘I thought you said a hot date.’”

“Ouch,” muttered Sansa. 

“So I punched him, obviously, and I told him that if he was so keen on having a hot date, I ought to go with Ned Dayne. And he asked me if I would be wearing the suit, then, since Ned is prettier than me. And I punched him again and I told him that if it bothered him so much I’d just go with Lommy or Hot Pie since they’re nicer to me than Gendry is. And then he asked me what made me think they even wanted to go with me, and I told him the same thing that made him think a hot girl would want to go anywhere with him, and we yelled at each other for a while and then I punched him and now I’m here.”

Sansa and Jeyne exchanged another knowing look.

“Well…did you want to go to the dance with him?” asked Sansa.

“I mean, you know…whatever,” grumbled Arya. “I don’t care. I just thought we could…I don’t know. Geeze.”

“Because it sounds like Gendry wants to go with you,” said Jeyne. 

“That’s stupid, he told me he wanted a hot date.” 

“No, he just said you weren’t hot,” Sansa reminded her.

“And, well, dear, you aren’t, exactly,” said Jeyne. “Your hair is a rat’s nest and your wardrobe looks like it belongs to a taller, heavier boy.”

“But Gendry never said he didn’t want to go with you,” Sansa interrupted before Jeyne incited the Wrath of Arya. 

Arya regarded them with narrow eyes. “What are you saying?”

“Gendry does want to go with you,” said Sansa. “Why else would he get so upset when you talked about the other boys you could go with?”

Arya looked doubtful. “Well…I mean…he’s just being stupid…isn’t he?”

“Oh, you’re in denial! How cute,” Jeyne squealed. 

“I am not!” Arya insisted. “I just…if he wanted to go with me, why would he be so mean?”

“You two are always mean to each other,” Sansa pointed out. “And it’s obvious you two want to go together. I think you should just tell him you’re sorry and make up with him.”

“I shouldn’t have to apologize; he’s the one who said I was ugly and not even Hot Pie would want to go with me!”

“Yes, I know,” said Sansa with an air of maddening patience. “But you did hurt his feelings with all that talk of who else you wanted to go to the dance with. I’m sure if you apologized to him he would apologize for all the mean things he said to you and you would both feel a lot better.”

“Why should I want to make him feel better?” Arya wanted to know.

Jeyne flipped a page of Maiden Fair Magazine with admirable nonchalance. “Well, of course, you don’t have to. But I mean, if you would rather spend the entire evening with Ned instead of Gendry, well…”

Arya looked troubled. “I…I guess I could talk to him…”

“Do it!” urged Sansa. 

“You should compliment him,” said Jeyne. “Say something nice about his eyes or something.”

“That’s dumb, why would I do that?” Arya scoffed.

“Just trust me,” insisted Jeyne. 

Arya didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Well…if you say so…” 

“We’ll be here if you need anything,” said Sansa.

Arya wandered out of the dorm room with a frown on her face.

She found Gendry on the lawn, tossing a Frisbee with Hot Pie and Lommy. He was also missing a shirt. Arya liked when Gendry didn’t wear a shirt. Not that she was going to tell him that. His face darkened at her approach, and he turned so that she was talking to his side. “Yeah?” he ground out, tossing the Frisbee to Hot Pie. Hot Pie fumbled to catch the disc and ended up falling over.

Arya took a deep breath. “I just…wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I said. And for punching you.”

Gendry gave her a suspicious look. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Because it’s polite,” she snapped. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “You, um…look like you’ve been working out.”

Gendry scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. 

“What are you trying to say?” he demanded.

“I’m not trying to say anything!” she snapped.

“What’s going on? First you say you’re sorry, which you never do, and then you make some weirdly vague statement about working out?”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“I’m paranoid, am I?”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

Hot Pie and Lommy exchanged glances before sidling off as fast as possible.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“My problem?! I was just trying to be nice!”

“You’re never nice; you’re up to something.”

“I was just trying to say I’m sorry, and you’re supposed to say you’re sorry too but you fucked it up!”

“I’m not sorry.”

“WELL, YOU WILL BE!” Arya punched his stupid, well-toned abs and stormed off. She made to stomp to her dorm room and then remembered something. She stomped to Sansa and Jeyne’s room instead, opened their door and bellowed, “THAT WAS STUPID ADVICE I’M NEVER LISTENING TO YOU AGAIN” before slamming the door and stomping to her room.

.

Gendry spent the rest of the weekend complaining to Hot Pie and Lommy. They thought they would get a break on Monday, when they had all their classes with Arya, but she wouldn’t stop complaining, either. 

Something had to be done.

For dinner on Monday, Hot Pie and Lommy sat Gendry down to have a talk.

“You need to apologize to Arya,” said Lommy.

“I will not,” snorted Gendry into his chicken.

“You told her that she wasn’t hot. Girls don’t like to be told that,” explained Hot Pie helpfully.

“Well, she isn’t,” said Gendry. 

“Yes, but you shouldn’t say that,” Hot Pie continued. “You’re supposed to compliment them because it makes them feel better.”

“Well Ned Dayne can compliment her as much as he wants,” said Gendry sourly. “If she’d rather go with him, that’s fine. I don’t care.”

“But Arya doesn’t want to go with Ned Dayne. She wants to go with you, but then you told her she wasn’t hot and that hurt her feelings,” Hot Pie said, still maddeningly patient. “If you just told her you were sorry, she’d go with you.”

“You should apologize,” agreed Lommy.

Gendry considered them as he chewed his chicken. “I don’t know…this sounds kind of…lame.”

“Well, of course, you don’t have to do it,” said Hot Pie. “If you’re okay with watching Arya dance with Ned Dayne all night then that’s great, good for you.”

Gendry got up and wordlessly stormed out of the cafeteria.

“He should apologize,” said Lommy unhelpfully.

.

Gendry tracked down Arya in the library, where she was frowning over her biology book. Her frown only grew bigger when she saw him approaching. “What do you want?” she asked nastily.

He shifted from foot to foot. “I, um…I’m sorry I said…you know…all those things. And when you apologized and I—”

“Hey Arya, I found a book on photosynthesis!”

Gendry’s jaw clenched as Ned Dayne appeared from behind a bookshelf.

“Oh, hi, Gendry!” Ned said cheerfully. “Arya and I are working on our biology homework together.”

“Are you?” Gendry ground out.

“You were saying?” Arya prompted with a look of furious triumph.

Gendry scowled at both of them. “Nothing.” He turned and stalked out of the library.

.

Gendry and Arya maintained a cold distance from one another over the next few days. Hot Pie and Lommy were torn between their two best friends; it rather felt, as Lommy said, like a divorce.

Sansa and Jeyne were just as upset; as their own love lives were so uneventful, they had counted dearly on Arya’s, which was now nonexistent.   
Something had to be done.

On Thursday, three days after Gendry’s failed apology and the beginning of his and Arya’s Cold War, Sansa gathered Jeyne, Hot Pie, and Lommy in the godswood.

“We have to do something about Arya and Gendry,” she said. “The dance is a week from Saturday and they don’t look like they’re going to make up on their own. We have to step in.”

“Yeah, but what are we supposed to do?” asked Hot Pie. “Gendry will get pissed if we try to push him again, and she’ll murder us if anyone tries to get her to talk to him.”

“I know,” said Sansa. “That’s why we have to make it look like we aren’t trying to get them to talk to each other.” Seeing their confused faces, she continued, “It’s like you said, Hot Pie; they’ll never go along with it if they know that we’re behind it. But if circumstances just happened to be arranged so that they were constantly running into each other…”

“Do go on,” Jeyne said excitedly.

Sansa relayed her plan to them. When she was finished, the others agreed. Anything to get Arya and Gendry together.

.

Arya normally spent her Friday nights (and all of her spare time, really) with Gendry, Hot Pie, and Lommy; but as she and Gendry were feuding and Hot Pie and Lommy had meekly told her they were spending Friday night with him, she was left with nothing to do. Sansa and Jeyne had taken pity on her and invited her to hang out with them. Frankly, Arya had no interest whatsoever in painting her nails and watching romantic comedies and whatever else girly-girls did on their Friday nights, but she didn’t exactly have a lot of options. It was either spend her Friday night alone and miserable, or endure whatever torture Sansa and Jeyne had in store. She chose the torture.

It wasn’t actually as bad as she had anticipated; they spent a lot of time watching cat videos and song parodies and generally laughing. 

Then Jeyne pulled up an online quiz.

“This tells you what kind of guy is your perfect match,” said Jeyne excitedly. She had, unbeknownst to Arya, created this quiz herself and rigged it so that the answers Arya was bound to choose would give her a perfect match strikingly similar to Gendry.

“That sounds fun!” said Sansa with a little too much enthusiasm. “Can I try?”

“Sure!” Jeyne had also rigged it for Sansa, but Sansa didn’t know that.

Arya frowned as Sansa answered questions about her favorite color, her dream job, the place she’d most like to live, and what her ideal date would be. Sansa clicked the “Submit Answers” button and grinned encouragingly at Arya.

Arya peered over her shoulder. “‘Your perfect match may not be who you think it is. He’s shy, but get him talking and you’ll find out just how sweet and sensitive he is. If he hasn’t approached you yet, be confident and make the first move. You’ll both appreciate it in the long run.’ That sounds a lot like Podrick.”

“Yes,” said Sansa, glaring at Jeyne. “It does.”

“Why don’t you have a turn, Arya?” asked Jeyne. “I’ve, um, already taken the quiz.”

“I don’t need to know my perfect match,” Arya snorted.

“Oh, come on, it’s fun!” wheedled Jeyne.

Arya gave a dramatic sigh and turned the laptop towards her. It was a dumb quiz; she answered all the questions and hit “Submit Answers” with a resigned air. Sansa read her results excitedly. “‘Your perfect match is someone who is very close to you, someone you probably regard as a brother. You butt heads often, but you have more in common than you think. Try talking instead of arguing next time you interact and see how he reacts!’ Arya, who does that sound like?” she finished, even more excited than before.

“I don’t know. Theon?” Arya guessed in a bored tone.

“No!” exclaimed Sansa, stricken. “Think harder!”

“I don’t know. Hot Pie?”

Sansa dropped her head in her hands.

.

Hot Pie and Lommy spent all of Saturday with Gendry, too, and Arya found herself once again agreeing to hang out with Sansa and Jeyne. They were going into town, at least, which was nice.

They lingered at a couple of dress shops, where Sansa and Jeyne tried thrusting dresses at Arya, but none of them interested her very much. Sansa seemed addicted to her phone, but Arya didn’t think too much about it; maybe Podrick had finally worked up the nerve to talk to her. Arya didn’t even think too much about it when Sansa suddenly insisted they go to the ice cream shop. She was always up for ice cream. 

They pushed open the door…

…and saw Gendry, Hot Pie, and Lommy sitting in one of the booths.

“Oh, hello, boys! We didn’t expect to see you here,” said Sansa.

“Yeah, how completely bizarre and random,” added Jeyne. Sansa elbowed her.

Arya was not as polite.

“What are you doing here?” she snarled at Gendry.

He scowled. “I’m eating ice cream, what the fuck does it look like I’m doing?”

Arya stormed out of the ice cream shop.

“You should apologize,” said Lommy, slurping up his chocolate shake.

.

Sansa, Jeyne, Hot Pie, and Lommy were not to be discouraged, however. On Sunday, Hot Pie and Lommy coaxed Gendry outside to play Frisbee. Arya, Sansa, and Jeyne strolled by not ten minutes after they’d been out there. Gendry “accidentally” threw the Frisbee at Arya’s head; she had to be restrained by all four of their friends.

On Monday, Arya woke up to find a folded piece of paper slipped underneath her door. It read:

"Roses are red  
Violets are blue  
The person I want to go to the dance with  
Is you"

When she came back to her dorm to drop off her books before dinner, she found another one.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  
Thou art super hot  
You are a babe  
Please go to the dance with me"

Arya showed the notes to her roommate, Myrcella, in the hopes that a girly girl would be able to help her figure out who the hell was writing these, but Myrcella laughed so hard she snorted. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just…it’s too funny!” she gasped, wiping a tear. “Are you sure Lommy didn’t write it?”

Arya hoped it wasn’t Lommy.

She got another note on Tuesday morning.

"A bear there was, a bear, a bear  
All black and brown and covered with hair  
I am not hairy like the bear  
But I need a maiden fair  
Please"

She tucked the note in her notebook for lack of a better place to put it (it wasn’t every day she got love letters, even poorly written ones) and went down to breakfast. Part of her hoped—er, wondered if it was Gendry. 

She was on her way to class when one of the Walder Freys knocked into her and sent her books scattering. He ran off before she could yell at him; sighing, she bent down and gathered up her books.

Gendry stood in front of her, looking both annoyed at seeing her and incredibly awkward. “You, um, dropped this.”

She saw that it was the love letter and snatched it out of his hands, face turning red. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

“So someone’s writing you love letters,” he said in a strained kind of voice.

She felt her heart sink. “You mean…it wasn’t you?”

“Me? Gods, no, that poem sucks.” He looked insulted she even thought it was him.

“Oh. Well, good,” she scoffed. “I don’t want to go with you anyway, so…don’t waste your breath or anything.”

“Well, I don’t want to go with you either, so that’s…great,” he snapped, storming down the hallway. 

Sansa, Jeyne, Hot Pie, and Lommy all let out groans from where they had been watching several feet away. “Great! We paid Walder for nothing!” Jeyne exclaimed.

Sansa had a determined look in her eyes. “Looks like it’s time for Plan C.”

.

The next day, Ned Dayne asked if Arya wanted to work on their biology homework together. She was in the middle of complaining about cellular mitosis versus cellular meiosis when Ned suddenly blurted, “Do you want to go to the dance with me?”

Arya stared at him in shock. “Have you been sending me love letters?”

“What?” He blinked, confused. “Uh, no.”

“Oh.” Arya felt awkward. “Well, then…yeah, okay.” She thought about Gendry and how this would show him. “Yeah,” she said again, confident. “Yeah, I’d love to go to the dance with you.”

Gendry stormed out from behind a bookshelf. He opened his mouth, pointed to Ned, pointed to Arya, and pointed back to Ned before he closed his mouth and stormed out of the library.

Sansa and Jeyne, hidden behind another bookshelf, high-fived.

.

On Saturday night, the students of Westeros Academy crowded into the gymnasium for the annual end-of-year dance. Gendry was, as he had promised, going stag (if you don’t think that’s funny you can get out of his face okay). The idea was much less appealing when Lommy and Hot Pie also came stag.  
He didn’t see Arya for a while. He wondered if Ned had broken their date—better yet, if Arya had broken it off with Ned and was sitting in her room right now. Half of him was contemplating finding her; he felt awful when he realized that if he had just apologized they could be friends or whatever they were and having a good time right now.

“Wow,” said Hot Pie, munching on a cookie from the refreshment table. “Arya looks really good tonight.”

Gendry snapped his head around to look where Hot Pie was staring. 

Arya did look really good tonight. A strapless black dress revealed the body she so often hid under too-large t-shirts and baggy jeans, and it looked as if her sister had gotten hold of her hair. She was even wearing a little bit of makeup.

And she was dancing with Ned Dayne.

“You should’ve apologized,” said Lommy solemnly.

Gendry stormed over to the couple and yanked Ned by the scruff of his neck.

“Find something else to do,” he growled, releasing Ned.

The younger boy didn’t need to be told twice; he scrambled away as fast as his legs would carry him.

“What the hell was that for?!” Arya snapped. “He didn’t do anything to you!”

“You look hot tonight!” Gendry snapped back at her.

“I know I do!” Arya snapped in retaliation. She regarded him for a moment before reaching down to pull off her shoes. “To be honest, I don’t like it.”

“It’s not you,” Gendry agreed. 

Arya smiled up at him. “Do you want to get out of here? Watch a movie, order pizza.”

Gendry smiled down at her. “That sounds great, actually.” He held up his fist and she bumped it.

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”

They turned to see Sansa, Jeyne, Hot Pie, and Lommy all gaping at them.

“AFTER ALL THAT WORK, YOU FIST-BUMP?!” Jeyne said furiously. “WHERE’S THE KISS?!”

Arya and Gendry made faces. 

“Ugh, why would we do that?” Arya wanted to know. 

Jeyne nearly tore out her hair in frustration.

“We’re going to watch a movie, though, if you want to join us,” said Gendry.

And that was how Gendry, Arya, Sansa, Jeyne, Hot Pie, and Lommy ended up sprawled on Sansa and Jeyne’s beds and the floor, high heels kicked to the side and ties and jackets flung on the beds as they gorged on pizza and made fun of the horror movie they found on Netflix.

.

Later, much later, Sansa curled up on her own bed, still in her blue dress and ready to pass out. She glanced one last time at Arya, whose head had rolled comfortably onto Gendry’s shoulder. Sansa smiled and closed her eyes.


End file.
